


Twilight Blue

by shieldings



Series: We'd Fly Away Together [2]
Category: Teen Titans (Animated Series), Teen Titans (Comics)
Genre: Angst, F/M, General suffering, I'm so sorry, Implied/Referenced Adeline Kane, Mental Health Issues, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Not a healthy relationship, Self-Hatred, Slade/Terra was a mistake, suicide ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-08-09 10:45:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7798723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shieldings/pseuds/shieldings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Most of the time she feels flat.  She can play at having emotions, at being a person.  She can laugh and sweat and go cold and silent, and it's like pouring a glass of water onto a sidewalk.  It leaves a mark, but soon it's as though it never happened.  Everything is shallow and lukewarm and unsatisfying.</p><p>But Dick is real.  When he tries to look stoic, she can see the emotions churning behind his face.  His hands shake, he becomes pale, his voice cracks and his shoulders tense.  Every part of him is feeling, even if he doesn't want it.</p><p>She's jealous.</p><p>That's a feeling, right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twilight Blue

**Author's Note:**

> oKAY HERE'S SOME MORE SELF-INDULGENT ROBTERRA BULLSHIT  
> This is a companion story to "Bitter," so everything I said about that also applies to this.  
> It's also from Tara's perspective, so there's more nastiness in general. I feel kind of guilty posting this, lmao  
> I've been having some health problems, so I'm not posting as often as I'd like to. Trying to work out a good med balance  
> Anyway here's something Terrible  
> Two Mentally Ill Kids Kissing And Being Unhappy

It's not something Tara particularly enjoys, but it's part of the job.

 

These clothes aren't hers; the robe is a little too big, and it's a color she'd never wear otherwise. It doesn't matter, because it doesn't stay on for very long.

 

His hands are large and rough, from years of desperate fighting. She focuses on not flinching when he touches her; it's childish to be afraid. He traces the line of her hip with his forefinger, and she traces the line of his collarbone with hers. It is a mutual exchange. The bristles of his beard burn against her bare skin, and his mouth is hot and wet on hers.

 

Against all her efforts, she lets out a small cry. He seems to like that, so she grits her teeth and tries to stay silent. She wraps her arms around his neck as though he's a piece of driftwood keeping her afloat. Each movement is strategic, though she isn't sure what her goal is. His hands are in her hair and on her breast and throat (but he only has two, so how?). She knows this will leave a mark, but she also knows that it's something she shouldn't be talking about. She focuses on a spot on the ceiling: it looks like a small bird (a finch, maybe, or a sparrow).

 

“You're beautiful,” he says, and she knows he's telling the truth.

 

It ends in a mess of human weight and shared guilt (she assumes). He leaves the room first, as always.

 

“You did well,” he says, looking over his shoulder as he steps through the door. Because he has said it, she knows she has.

 

The finch on the ceiling is an angelic judge: it has seen her sins.

–

Dick is annoyingly innocent. Even though he's quieter than the Robin she saw on TV as a child, he still exudes a sort of idealistic purity, which doesn't suit their current situation at all.

 

Slade seems to relish calling him by that name, the name that belongs to a purer time. Dick remains stone-faced throughout. He's become resigned: he knows that he's been locked on to this path.

 

When she returns to their room, he refuses to look at her (the finch on the ceiling has told him, maybe). She smiles and laughs, to show him that she hasn't noticed his rejection.

–

She likes the feeling of soil between her fingers. She wonders if she would have liked gardening, in another life. She decides that she wouldn't have: it would be too slow-paced, and she's not a patient person.

 

In another life, maybe she'd have had adventures.

–

“Everything is a fight,” she says to the ceiling. She's not sure Dick is awake, but saying it out loud feels right. “If you're alive, you're fighting.”

 

“Go to sleep,” Dick says.

 

“Fuck you too,” she says, but she does her best to stop thinking.

–

Sometimes, she thinks about what she would look like dead. Shot through the head with her face unrecognizable and her arms spread carelessly across the sidewalk, or maybe hanging out of some Bludhaven dumpster with one sneaker on, half-eaten by rats. Floating face-down in a ditch with her hair floating around her like jellyfish tentacles and cloudy blood ballooning from her chest.

 

She swears to herself that it's not creepy. She swears to herself that it's normal to always imagine herself dead. It doesn't mean anything that the corpses are always faceless.

 

They shouldn't be calming images, but they are. She'll take all the calm she can get.

–

Tara wishes she were sad, or even scared. She wants, for a moment, to be something small and nervous and graceful, instead of something overbearing and angry and sweating.

 

Of course, when people treat her like she's small, she just gets angrier. Life is funny that way.

–

Control is everything, probably. If she's in control of the situation, she's in control of her life.

 

In her head, she keeps a short list of things she's actually good at. Contracts are at the top of that list (right above lying and whistling).

 

There's just something satisfying about the sound of bones scraping together.

–

“What was it like?” she asks, staring at the ceiling. “What was it like, being Robin?”

 

Dick is silent for a few seconds. “I don't really know how to answer that,” he says. “Being Robin was just being me.”

 

“Lame.”

 

“You're the one who uses their own name as a secret identity.” She can hear him shifting on the bunk below her. Maybe he's rolling over. She imagines the way the fabric of his sheets moves.

 

“Wasn't my idea. Secret identities are overrated anyway.” The rustling stops. He's done rolling over. Neat. “If there's something special about us, why shouldn't we take advantage of it? If everybody knows how strong we are, they'll respect us, right?”

 

“That would feel like cheating.”

 

She blows a raspberry, just to make a point.

 

“I'm not really that special, anyway.” His voice cracks. She wonders if he's upset, or if it's just the puberty talking. “I've just had more training than most people.”

 

“If you're here, you've gotta be at least kind of special.”

 

“...Fair enough.”

–

One afternoon, she walks into the room without knocking and catches him shirtless. He makes a funny noise and slams the door in her face.

 

They make an agreement to keep their eyes closed when they enter, just to be safe. In their situation, modesty probably shouldn't matter, but it does anyway. Modesty is rules, and rules are civilization, and civilization keeps you from becoming an animal.

 

When she closes her eyes, she sees a tapestry of layered bruises. She wonders if she looks the same, underneath the oversized bathrobe.

–

Most of the time she feels flat. She can play at having emotions, at being a person. She can laugh and sweat and go cold and silent, and it's like pouring a glass of water onto a sidewalk. It leaves a mark, but soon it's as though it never happened. Everything is shallow and lukewarm and unsatisfying.

 

But Dick is real. When he tries to look stoic, she can see the emotions churning behind his face. His hands shake, he becomes pale, his voice cracks and his shoulders tense. Every part of him is feeling, even if he doesn't want it.

 

She's jealous.

 

That's a feeling, right?

–

“I'm a fake human,” she says to the finch on the ceiling. She wonders if the sun has risen yet.

–

She's a good actress. She can smile and tear up and sniff and look like just the _sweetest_ little thing, until she doesn't need to anymore. It makes contracts easy, and it makes lying easy.

 

Maybe, in another life, she would have gone to Hollywood.

 

Maybe she would have had her face plastered across the side of some city bus.

 

She can't keep herself from laughing at the idea.

–

“Why do you keep him there?” she asks Slade as they clean up a crime scene. “Why do you keep Dick at the base? He hates it there.”

 

“He's beginning to open up,” Slade says. “Soon, he'll be ready for his first contract.”

 

“How come I started so much earlier?” She looks through the toolbox for the spare gloves. There's a hole in hers, and she doesn't want to leave a fingerprint.

 

“You understood why I wanted you for an apprentice. He's in denial, so he can't progress.”

 

“Stop talking like a shrink.”

 

He doesn't answer, but they pour the gasoline together, and he lets her light the match, and that's like a bonding activity or something.

–

Dick is having a good day. He hasn't cried or gotten mad or anything, and Tara isn't sure why. She likes it, though. He has such a wide smile, but it doesn't look stretchy or forced. She can't place it, but there's something about his face that keeps it from putting her on guard.

 

Maybe she's getting too used to him.

 

He whistles, sometimes. It's off-key and grating, but it's the happiest noise she's heard in a long time. The tunes vary from day to day, and even from hour to hour, but there's one consistent stretch of notes that is vaguely familiar. She can't place her finger on it. It makes her think of scuffed cassette tapes, and she doesn't like it.

–

Control is everything, absolutely. Everything she does is part of a complicated power game. That's why she's able to stomach it. She doesn't kill for the sake of killing, every cruel word she says has a meaning behind it, and she fucks because it gives her a little bit of leverage against the person who holds her powers and her sanity.

 

Cognitively, she knows these things.

 

If she repeats them to herself often enough, she'll start to feel them, too, probably. Her gut will stop twisting, and she'll be calm. She won't laugh even though she doesn't know what's funny, and she'll stop being afraid of the finch on the ceiling.

–

Sparring with Dick should be fun. He's pretty good at dodging and she's pretty good at throwing rocks, so they make an all-around pretty good team. He holds back. She doesn't. They scream good-natured insults at each other and pat each other on the back.

 

In the end, she wins most of the time, but she knows it's because his heart isn't in it. It's disappointing.

 

She wants to see him in his entirety. She wants to see what he looks like when he isn't being watched.

–

She staggers back to the base, specks of dried blood sprinkled across the front of her tank top. She's fairly certain it's not hers. She hands a muddy driver's license to the robot waiting for her outside her room (the target was 5'11, male, and had a permit to drive a truck. She couldn't even remember his name). The guard moves to the side, and she enters the room, wanting nothing more than to collapse and sleep for the rest of her life.

 

Dick is sitting in the corner, facing the wall. It takes her a moment to figure out what he's doing.

 

He's drawing. It's three in the fucking morning, and he's drawing on the wall with a burnt stick. Where did he even get a stick? It's not like there are any trees in the base. He's not even _good._ She recognizes Superman's shield (who doesn't?) and some kind of bird, but everything else is a sort of indiscriminate wall-scribble.

 

She's suddenly overcome with a feeling like warm fog in her chest. Without even greeting him first, she drops to her knees and embraces him from behind. He starts and the stick falls to the ground, but he doesn't pull away from her.

 

“Are you okay?” he asks.

 

“Better than ever,” she whispers into the back of his neck.

 

He wriggles awkwardly until he faces her. She doesn't let go. He stares at her with an unreadable expression. His eyes are blue, she realizes. How come she'd never noticed before? They're a twilight blue, too dark to look like a daytime sky, but too light to... He starts saying something, but she doesn't hear it.

 

She kisses him: she squeezes her eyes shut and thinks of the sky. His mouth doesn't really taste like anything, but it's alive and alive is what matters right now. Their teeth click together, he makes a sort of startled squeak, and she might actually be crying but she's not sure so it doesn't matter.

 

He stumbles backwards, and she doesn't really have any other choice than letting go of him.

 

“Y- you shouldn't kiss people without asking,” he scolds. His face is beet-red.

 

“I wanted to,” she says. She _did_ want to, right? At least, more than she'd wanted other things. Kissing Dick felt different from kissing Slade. He was softer, in general. He had fewer sharp edges, and he didn't really grab at anything. He wasn't even that much bigger than she was.

 

Holy shit, he's practically a kid. She knows he's older than her, but he gives off such an _innocent_ vibe. What if that was his first kiss? No, that couldn't be true. After all, he's probably had sex before (everybody has by the time they're their age, definitely). But still, he really hadn't needed her to do that. He hadn't been expecting it. She'd taken advantage of him.

 

Bile is rising in her throat.

 

She smiles and makes up an excuse before crawling onto her bunk and curling up like a pillbug.

–

She's not a moral person. She never has been. Back when she was a child, she stole a can of stuffed grape leaves from the grocery store, just to prove to herself that she could. She never gave it back, but she never ate any of the grape leaves, either. She buried them in the palace gardens, at the edge, where the weeds strangled the flowers.

–

There's a woman holding a fat, blond baby in the photograph beneath the big bed. She has dark, wavy hair and a mole at the corner of her mouth. She's standing beside a young boy with pale hair and intense, familiar eyes. They match the ones that belong to the tall man in the military uniform with his arm around the woman's shoulder.

 

Tara knows this can only mean one thing.

 

She tries not to think about the ages of the people in the photo. She tries not to consider that the baby might be even older than she is by now.

 

That would make things _weird,_ wouldn't it?

–

Dick has his first contract. He half-falls into the room, as if he's drunk. There's blood on his cheek, but she doesn't point it out for fear of upsetting him. She wonders if this is the first time he's seen someone die. She knows that Batman doesn't kill people, and neither do the Titans, so he probably isn't used to death.

 

When he finally falls asleep, his face isn't peaceful. She stares at it for longer than she should.

–

Despite the family in the photograph, Tara keeps on doing what she's good at. She puts on sultry voices and chews on the tip of a cigarette. She clings like a crawling bug, she whines like a starving dog, she bites her tongue when she wants to say “no,” because she's on shaky ground as it is (haha). She pretends to be an adult.

 

She wonders where Slade got a woman's bathrobe. She wonders how old it is. She wonders who else has worn it. She wonders what she herself would look like, in the robe at the bottom of a lake, bloated and floating and faceless.

–

“I miss Gotham,” Dick announces one evening, startling her out of her half-nap. She bumps her head on the ceiling and looks down at him. He's standing on his head, as though this is perfectly normal.

 

“No shit,” she answers.

 

“I miss being Robin,” he says.

 

“Tough luck,” she answers.

 

“Isn't there anything you miss?”

 

“I miss you keeping your mouth shut.”

 

“You say names when you're asleep,” he says, not meeting her eye. “You say, 'Brion.'”

 

She groans. “Don't you have anything better to do than interrogate me?”

 

“Not really.” He tumbles into a sitting position and gives her a sad little smile. “Was Brion your friend, or..?”

 

“Big brother.” Half-brother, to be perfectly honest, but Tara wasn't really in the mood to discuss her family dynamics.

 

“What's it like, having brothers and sisters?” He tilts his head.

 

“Didn't see him much. Sometimes we'd cook together, though. Made pelmeni.” She pauses for a second. “They turned out really gross.”

 

“...Sounds fun.”

 

“It was.”

–

She knows where she's supposed to be, but for some reason, the idea of Dick finding out what she's doing makes her feel a little sick. Instead, she waits patiently for him to doze off. She counts the cracks in the ceiling; she sees no finches, but she does find a rabbit and a rolling pin.

 

When he finally falls asleep, she brushes his hair back from his forehead and kisses it gently. She closes the door as quietly as possible.

 

A tune is running through her head. She wonders where she's heard it before.

–

She thinks that dying would be funny, maybe. Not because of the “being dead” part, but because of all the things that would happen afterward. The idea of the chaos the base would fall into gives her a sort of vindictive pleasure (schadenfreude? She'd read it in a comic strip somewhere).

–

When he tags along for her contract, he stares at her as though she's doing something amazing. She tries to get the job done as efficiently as possible, and he just prances behind her, apparently just happy to be above ground. He grabs her hand with gloved fingers, and she squeezes his palm.

 

Despite the gore and the chaos, she feels almost at peace.

–

Peace never lasts, really. Dick finds out about her. He finds out what kind of person she is. He _sees_ what kind of person she is, all flesh and hair and sweat and horror.

 

He stares at the ground, tense with his bangs in his eyes and his face uncharacteristically pale. His fists are clenched, she notices. His fingernails are digging into the palms of his hands. She smiles and shrugs, because that's the kind of creature she is. She doesn't care if other people are hurt by her diversions. She doesn't even notice, usually.

–

“I'm not doing anything wrong,” she tells him. “It's just what I do.”

 

“Why, though?” he asks. He's staring at his charcoal doodles in the corner. “I don't understand.”

 

“I mean, it feels good.” Probably. “He wanted to, and I noticed. Everybody does it.” She pauses, trying to think of a good point. “Your parents do it.”

 

“I don't think so.” She realizes that she's probably offended him, but that doesn't matter. “...You're scared of Slade too, though. I don't think you even like each other.”

 

“Why would you think that?” she realizes she's chewing on her thumbnail, so she puts her hands in her pockets to stop herself. “We get on great. He lets me pour the gasoline.”

 

Dick doesn't seem convinced. He picks up his stick and starts to draw aimless loops on the wall.

–

When she spars with Dick, he doesn't hold back. She doesn't, either. She puts the words she can't articulate into patterns of blows. She wonders if he's doing the same thing.

 

In the end, neither of them really gets hurt as much as they should.

–

Dick kisses her, this time. She stumbles into him, knocking him to the ground and letting her staff clatter onto the concrete floor of the sparring room. Instead of pushing her off, he tilts his head up and kisses her gently on the lips (soft, prying, warm and quiet). She clutches his shirt and closes her eyes and pretends that they're just a boy and a girl underneath the bleachers of some high-school sports field. She leans into the kiss, and he makes a sort of muffled sigh.

 

For a moment, she pushes the bathrobe and the finch to the back of her mind. For a moment, she allows herself to pretend to be a human.

 

They carry on until they're breathless and flushed. When he finally pulls away, he smiles at her, and his eyes are twilight blue and his nose is a little red and he's so painfully alive that she doesn't know if she wants to smile back or cry or punch him.

 

He leans up and whispers into her ear, more breath than words, “I love you.”

 

She curses more loudly than she should.

 

She kisses him on the cheek, helps him to his feet, and they continue sparring as if nothing has happened.

–

That night, Slade makes a point, with hand marks on her wrists and a kiss on her collarbone.

 

She's fairly certain he knows, but she isn't even sure she cares anymore.

 

She wonders if he sees her, or the woman with the mole, or someone else entirely.

 

She wonders if he was this way back then, back when he had a life and a history.

 

She wonders.

–

Tara is a hardened killer. She doesn't want Dick to forget that. Even when they're on contract together, and he sees that she's a monster, he still squeezes her hand.

 

It's as though he has forgiven her for something she has not yet stopped doing.

 

There's something in her ribcage, wrapped around her heart and lungs. She can't quite identify it, but she's certain it's a feeling, stronger than any she's had in a while. It doesn't burn, and it's not cold. It's like a room with a high ceiling, or a rainstorm, or the enraged screeching of a young owl.

 

It's hope, maybe.

–

The walls have broken down, and the long arm of the law has finally reached them. The Justice League is inside of the base, and everything has suddenly become very loud.

 

Slade's made a run for it. She's certain that he won't be caught. In her room, she shoves things haphazardly into a worn denim backpack (a toothbrush, five energy bars, a pocket knife, Dick's burnt stick). The robot sentry at her door isn't there anymore. She runs down the hallway, ignorant of her own erratic breathing. She looks around desperately, trying to spot Dick and devise a plan.

 

In the center of the main room, he's on his knees. Batman himself is there, his arms wrapped close around Dick's slack shoulders. Tara can't help but stare. This isn't the man she's seen on television or heard about from petty crooks. This is a father with a son he's already mourned. Somebody else approaches them (one of the Green Lanterns?) and says something she can't hear.

 

She realizes that any chance she might have had at happiness with Dick is gone. The people he belongs with have found him. Batman probably won't let him out of his sight ever again.

 

Tara lets her gut clench, and takes a deep breath to repel the creeping dizziness and anxiety. Now isn't the time to be irrational. Now isn't the time to lose control.

 

She allows herself a second to stare at them (saints) and then she (a demon) tears a strip of concrete from the floor. She grips it tightly, digs her fingers into it as if it were styrofoam, and pushes off. In the commotion, nobody sees her leaving. The halls blur past her, a filmstrip of memories. She grits her teeth. She leaves the past behind her. Her ears pop when she bursts into the real world.

 

The real world is cruel, but it's also full of opportunities. Tara knows this. If she doesn't die (by her own hand or somebody else's) she has a long road ahead of her. She's still young, and she can make a life for herself. The concrete is rough, and it warms quickly in the autumn sun. She keeps moving until the sky begins to darken. She climbs a tree and eats a protein bar. She stares into the fading blue of twilight, and she lets herself hope.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Ladies, Gentlemen, Individuals...
> 
>  
> 
> I'm Sorry


End file.
